


Endymion

by djdaddybek (llyn)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Pastoral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 08:52:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15602769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llyn/pseuds/djdaddybek
Summary: Does he fit in back at home, in his small village? No. His lips curl in a wry smile. No, never. Prettier than the girls--it’s the truth, it’s not vanity--he frightens the boys.





	Endymion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaitealyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaitealyn/gifts).



> Happy Birthday Babe!!! This is an AU we've talked about before, based on the myth of Endymion. I was inspired by [Keats' poem of the same name](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44469/endymion-56d2239287ca5). I hope your day is beautiful! <3

_ A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. _

-”Endymion,” Keats

* * *

 

**I.**

Moonlight floods the valley, casting thin, black shadows, painting the tall grass silver. A spring runs down from high in the mountains, its clear waters splashing from step to step in a crooked line of gentle falls that glow white when the moon is full. 

Little Yuri sits on a boulder at the edge of a low waterfall, idly weaving together the stems of night-blooming flowers into a crown, watching his flock below. The sheep coat the valley creek bed like a low fog, hooves splashing in the shallows. The spring lambs tuck under the ewe’s fluffy bellies, looking out at the moon-silver world with wide eyes. Yuri envies their sweet innocence. With one skinny leg hanging down from the rock and one bent at the knee, he rests his work in his lap and lays back to look up to the moon with a sigh. He’s happiest like this, when he’s alone.

Does he fit in back at home, in his small village? No. His lips curl in a wry smile. No, never. Prettier than the girls--it’s the truth, it’s not vanity--he frightens the boys. They pull his long hair, push him into the mud, call him names. Yuri spits back, claws their faces. But he can’t win in a real fight. Those awful boys, they’re built like wild boars. Yuri is a fawn among them.  

His dear grandpa can’t defend him, because he does not know how he suffers. Blind since forever, he does not know the sunshine blond of his grandchild’s hair, the fairy green of his eyes, the rose red of his lips that makes the other boys want to hurt him, in one way or another. 

Yuri hates them all. The boys. The girls who chase him, begging to braid his long hair. The old crones who cross themselves at the sight of him, muttering  _ faie _ under their breath. The young men who seek him out after a hunt, smelling like blood, smiling like wolves. He hates them all. 

But not the moon. Or the flock. Or the two sleek dogs with spots on their eyes. Not the moon-silver valley with its long grasses, the fat, white night-blooming flowers, the spring with its countless little waterfalls, splashling down. If he could stay here forever, he would. 

 

**II.**

A dark man stands above him, haloed by the bright, white moon. “May I sit with you?” he asks. His voice is deep and the long shadow of the moon hides his face.

Scrambling up to sitting, Yuri murmurs a shy, “Yes.” He’s careful not to look into his face. More and more, he’s scolded in the village. He doesn’t mean to but--well, he can’t help it, either. It’s not vanity, just the truth. His pretty face turns men’s hearts. He stares at the stranger’s boots instead. The hem of his cape. His clothes are the deepest black, shimmering like a night sky full of stars. Yuri thinks of the stories every village boy hears, of the wolfmen, of Pan, of the man in the moon. His heart races like a trapped hare’s. He thinks,  _ I’m only dreaming. I didn’t hear him come up. I’ve fallen asleep like a little fool and the sheep will stray. That is the _ real  _ danger here.  _

But no, when he does at last turn his head toward the valley below--if only to avert his stare as the man sit beside him, noiselessly--he sees the sheep are right where he left them. Still, he could be dreaming. There is something of a dream in the flock’s soft bleats, the drum of the waterfall against the slate, the man himself, in his sparkling black clothes, haloed by the moon, who smells like the earth after a heavy rain. 

Yuri can’t help but look, at least once, into his face. A darting glance. He’s handsome, with a serious air. He’s older, and Yuri’s mind flits back to the village, where the women whisper behind their hands. They can’t trust their husbands, not with the fairy in town. Yuri wonders whose husband this is, and if he likes fairies. Most men do. 

Yes, this one does. He picks up Yuri’s hand, trapping it gently between his own as a young child holds a butterfly. Again, Yuri thinks of the legends of the prowling wolfmen, but there is something calm and lonely about the man all in black. He doesn’t seem to be a roving beast. “You can look at me,” his voice is low and dark. “I’m not married,” he adds, with a smile in his voice, as if he could read a little shepherd boy’s mind. 

“Have you been following me?” Yuri’s voice is small in the wide, silver valley. Yes, he looks openly, now that it’s allowed. He likes to look. There are no men so handsome in the village. There’s Jean-Jacques, the butcher, who gives Yuri better cuts than most in exchange for--

But no. Even Jean-Jacques is not like this. Different. A mystery in the shape of a man. And so quiet. 

The man doesn’t lift his eyes from Yuri’s slim fingers, tracing each one with the calloused pad of his thumb. His head tilts, thinking over his answer. He says, “Yes. For a while, now.” 

“A-are you gonna--” 

“Shh.” The man lifts Yuri’s hand to his mouth, kissing his fingertips. Yuri’s face burns with embarrassment. His heart drums like the waterfall, until he’s afraid it might seize and stop. The man says, “I’ve watched you for a long time.”

“But you’re not from the village.”

“No.”

“Where--”

“Elsewhere.” Then he pauses, “A lonely place.” 

Yuri bites his lip, eyes slipping over the stranger’s form, with the moon so bright behind him. His dark eyes meet Yuri’s steadily. But there is a kind of need there, that Yuri has seen before. He’s not so mysterious that Yuri does not recognize the look of hunger, fey thing that he is. 

Fey thing that he is, Yuri knows his own wants as well. He slips his hand free of the stranger’s grasp and crowns him with the woven flowers in his lap. “I’m lonely, too,” he says, braver now that the man seems off guard, touching his new crown with quiet amusement. Yuri tilts his hips toward him, his skinny thighs falling onto the stranger’s, lap, boldly. “I can help you,” he says. 

It makes the man’s lips twitch. Then he smiles.

 

**III.**

There is an old story of a beautiful boy whom the moon took for himself. It’s one story of many, to frighten young shepherds awake in the peace of the meadows. 

The villagers cannot wake him. He sleeps on in the valley, moaning in such a way that the children are told to stay back. Those who knew him leave him flowers, as they would the dead. But his cheeks are rosy pink and his red lips soft and parted. He always was a fey thing. He never fit in. This enchantment only proves they were right all along. The village young become the old and the old pass on. 

The fairy in the valley never wakes. 

Yuri sleeps in a bower in the garden of the white temple. Its tall walls rise up on all sides. He moans in his sleep for the moon’s greedy kisses. For the bites he leaves over the boy’s white skin. His hands clench in the dark robes that spill like the night sky on either side of his spread legs, hiding them both from view. In his mind, they roll in the silvery grass of the meadow, the flock drifting by like fat clouds. Each kiss is an eternity. The sun never rises.


End file.
